


pockets full of stones

by Rhiannon87



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Breakfast, F/M, Family, Found Family, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2249946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short stories throughout the Toby Daye canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Toby and The Ludiaeg, Questions and Answers (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toby has a question for the Ludiaeg. Set between Rosemary & Rue and A Local Habitation.

“Why San Francisco?”

The Luidaeg shot me a sidelong glance. “Is that your question?”

“Nope.” I tore off another chunk of bread and tossed it to the seagulls. It was finally turning back to proper spring-- my first spring since the pond. The weather today was perfect, beautiful enough that I’d been reluctant to go inside. Maybe that’s why the Luidaeg had been waiting for me by the back door with a plastic bag full of stale bread. In this part of town, the docks were empty, save us and the gulls. It was nice.

She scowled. “You’ll ask, eventually.”

“And then you’ll kill me.”

“Probably.”

She still hadn’t answered my current question, though. “So why here?”

Another sidelong glance, then she reached into the bag (she’d made me carry it, of course) and grabbed a hunk of bread. “Me or Faerie?” she asked. She tore the bread in two, throwing half to the gulls and shoving the other half in her mouth.

Sometimes I wondered if she did stuff like that just to mess with me. “Both, I guess,” I said. Of all the cities in all the world, why did so many of Faerie’s citizens seem to end up in San Francisco? No one had ever been able to tell me, but none of the people I’d asked before had been Firstborn.

The Luidaeg shrugged. “Weather’s nice,” she said, smirking as a fish surfaced and grabbed the bread mere moments before a diving gull could take it.

I waited for her to continue. “That’s it?” I asked when she remained silent.

“Maybe,” she said with a sly grin. “I’m not required to tell you the whole truth. Unless you want to make me.”

Unless I wanted to blow my last question on something that stupid. Right. “You’re impossible,” I muttered and tossed some bread at the seagull who’d lost its bread to the fish.

“That’s what the stories say,” she agreed and grabbed another hunk of bread.

 


	2. Toby and the Ludiaeg, Questions and Answers (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More questions, fewer answers. Set after Late Eclipses.

“So.” I leaned across the kitchen table to snag a donut. “Mom's Firstborn.”

The Luidaeg watched through narrowed eyes as my hand passed over one of the salted caramels and relaxed only when I picked up a blueberry cake. “Yes, she is.”

“Which means you're my aunt.”

“Strictly speaking.”

I took a bite of donut and regarded her thoughtfully. She stared back, even as she picked up the aforementioned salted caramel donut and took a large bite. “You knew who I was,” I said. “When you came through the store that night.” The night before everything changed, before Evening's curse dragged me back into a world I'd tried so hard to leave behind. Given what I've gone through since then, it seems weird to be grateful to her, but... well, my life's always been pretty damn weird. So grateful I am.

The Luidaeg chuckled. “You remember that?”

“I wouldn't have, if you hadn't turned out to be the sea witch.” I shrugged. “You're the one who brought it up when I showed up here.”

“True.” She took a bite and leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, I knew who you were. And I knew what had happened to you. Amy wasn't checking up on you, so I figured someone in the family should.”

I finished my donut before speaking again. “She's not Maeve's or Titania's, right?”

“No, she's not.” The Luidaeg frowned. “You're walking on the edge of things I can't tell you, Toby. Amandine is Oberon's.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What, is Mom like Athena? Jumped out of his head fully formed?”

“No.” She shook her head and looked past my shoulder, her gaze distant. “No, Amy was a child once, same as the rest of us.”

I had a feeling that the subject of my grandmother was one of those 'bound by laws of Faerie against telling you, because Faerie doesn't want you to ever have useful information' things. “What was she like?” I asked instead. “When Mom was a kid?”

The Luidaeg blinked, refocusing her eyes on me. “She was a spoiled brat,” she said with a crooked grin. “Baby of the family. You know how it is. She was the golden girl, and she got everything she wanted.”

Until the day that Faerie found me and she couldn't have her human daughter. “When's the last time you saw her?”

She shrugged. “It's been a long time.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Oh, that's real helpful.”

“Don't get smart with me.”

“Why the hell not?” I flung myself against the back of the chair and folded my arms. I was acting like a sulky teenager; I knew it, and I didn't care. “Nobody ever tells me anything. Mom lied about what I was and _everybody_ else who knew just went along with it. Oleander knew something about her, and I'm not gonna even bother to ask you because you'd just say 'I can't tell you' or some bullshit.”

She scowled at me. “I _can't_ , October,” she said. “If I could, I would. It's not helping you, keeping you in the fucking dark, but I can't.” She shook her head. “The only person who can tell you is Amy.”

“And Mom's crazy and avoiding me,” I said. “So I've got nothing.”

The scowl faded. “If there was anything I could tell you, I would. Believe me. It would only help.”

I sighed. “I do.” I grabbed another donut. “You owe me for all the food I've brought you, at least.”

She snorted. “That's what nieces _do_ ,” she retorted. “Bring their elderly aunts food and then get their asses kicked at checkers.”


	3. Toby and May, almost sisters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not really sisters, but sometimes, they can pretend. Set after One Salt Sea.

Sometimes May likes to pretend like we’re really sisters. She’s the closest I’ll ever have, I guess, but it’s not the same. We didn’t grow up together. The only shared history we have is mine; I lived it, she got it dumped into her head, like binge-watching a TV series. There are parts of her history that I don’t know about and, until recently, didn’t know to ask.

Right now, sister-bonding-time is manifesting as her braiding my hair while we watch TV. We’ve got the apartment to ourselves, for now; Quentin’s at his lessons with Etienne, and Jazz is visiting family in San Mateo. I’m… starting to think that maybe I need to take some jobs, again. I’ve barely left the apartment in three months, aside from my trip to Half Moon Bay with the Ludiaeg.

“Stop that,” May says and lightly thumps the top of my head.

I try to twist around and glare at her, but her hold on my hair keeps me from moving. “Stop what?”

“Moving your head. I can’t do a proper French braid if you keep moving.”

I roll my eyes, but obediently raise my head and try to refocus on the screen. Speaking of binge-watching TV shows. May insisted that I had to watch this show, about a group of ex-criminals working together to help people get revenge outside the law. She insisted I’d like it. And if there’s anyone who’d know my tastes, it’s her. The show is pretty good.

“How do you even know how to French braid, anyway?” I ask. “I don’t.”

“Same way I know how to cook and you don’t,” May replies. “Yours aren’t the only memories I’ve got up here. Just the most recent.”

I start to nod, then remember the whole braiding thing and think better of it. She has Dare’s memories, too, I know that much, but I’ve got no idea who else she was when she was a night haunt.

A thought occurs to me, and I shouldn’t ask, I know I shouldn’t. I’m going to anyway. “Can I ask you something?”

“I think you just did.” May tugs at my hair, then snaps a hair tie off her wrist and starts wrapping it around the end of the braid.

“The night haunts take a person’s memories,” I begin, and May goes utterly still behind me. “Does that—would their personality be part of that?” Memories and mind and soul and person, they’re all connected, but faerie’s rules seem to separate them out sometimes.

May sighs and takes her hands out of my hair, the end of the braid falling against the back of my neck. “It’s not an afterlife, Toby,” she says. “Not like what the mortals believe. We carry their memories, but we’re not them, not any more than I was you when I was created.” She sighs. “If you called them again—which I really don’t recommend, by the way—you’d see one of my siblings who looked like him. Talked like him. But it wouldn’t be him.”

The tone of her voice says I should know that already, and the thing is, I do. I just… I keep tripping over pieces of him. People leave so many things behind when they die, t-shirts and books and scraps of paper, and it feels like too much and not enough at the same time. I don’t want to keep finding the remnants of his life. I hate that that’s all I have left. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay,” May says quickly. “Really. I—honestly, it’s easier now that you know. It was kind of hard, having to talk around it.”

“Did you think I’d be upset?” I tilt my head back to look up at her.

May shrugs. “Most people think we’re harbingers of death,” she says. Then she pauses and smirks. “Then again, you let me move into the spare bedroom when I actually  _was_ a harbinger of your death, so maybe I shouldn’t have worried.”

“Because I’m the weirdest person you know?”

“You’re pretty high on the list.”  


	4. Toby/Tybalt, the evening after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first night they wake up together. Set after Ashes of Honor.

I hadn’t slept this well in over a year. Falling unconscious due to injury or blood loss didn’t count as sleeping—I’d experienced the former often enough to know the difference. Waking up warm and comfortable and pain-free after a proper day’s sleep had been a rarity, recently, and I was going to enjoy it. It was just early enough that the house was still quiet, and I kept my eyes closed as I nestled into the pillows again, breathing in the faint smells of fabric softener and pennyroyal.

I couldn’t help a smile at the latter. I’d fallen asleep to the feeling of him stroking my hair, and now, even though we weren’t touching, I could hear him breathing beside me. That was enough to get me to open my eyes. I’d never actually seen Tybalt sleeping before.

And I wouldn’t now, because he was already awake and watching me when I opened my eyes. “Hello,” he murmured, a small, almost bewildered smile on his face.

“Hi.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just leaned in and kissed him instead, because I could do that now.

Tybalt curled a hand around my shoulder when we parted. “Sleep well?” he asked, rubbing his thumb back and forth across my skin.

“Better than I have in a long time.”

He smiled again. “Good.”

Deep orange sunlight crept in around the edges of the heavy curtains in the windows, but otherwise, the room was still quite dark. The human parts of my brain were informing me that this meant staying in bed was a great idea, and given the very naked King of Cats tangled up in the sheets beside me, the rest of me was inclined to agree. I reached out to toy with his hair—again, simply because I  _could_ —and smiled when his eyes half-closed. “How long can you stay?”

Tybalt sighed heavily and opened his eyes fully again. “Regretfully, not long,” he said. “Given recent events,” he grimaced faintly, “I need to be a rather visible King for a time. Samson would not have swayed any to his side had his complaints been seen as entirely without merit.”

I blinked, then looked away. Right. Samson had tried to kill us all because of me. Because I was a distraction. Because I—

“October.” There was something almost wryly amused in Tybalt’s voice as he put his fingers under my chin and gently turned me to look at him. “Stop it. Samson’s actions were not your fault. My association with you was an excuse for him to use—had you not been in the picture, he would have found something else to use against me.” His hand shifted to brush his fingers against my cheek. “And I rather doubt I would have survived his attacks without you there.”

I sighed. “But some of your people still sided with him.”

“And some of them would have done so no matter what the reason,” he said. “A century and more is more than enough time for irritation to grow into resentment and hatred. I’ve been King long enough to know that there will always be those in my Court who dislike my rule. That is their choice, as it is their choice to stay in my Court.” I frowned, looking away again, and Tybalt inched closer to me. “This was not your fault,” he repeated. “And you know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Not on purpose,” I said. He gave me a flat look that plainly said how difficult I was being. “I know you don’t blame me, but you not blaming me and me not blaming me are two different things.”

Tybalt frowned slightly as he parsed through that horrible excuse for a sentence. “I suppose so,” he said after a moment. “Still. Know that neither I nor any who remain in my Court hold you responsible.”

That did help, more than I’d expected. “Thank you.”

He smiled at that, a bit surprised, but apparently we’d reached the point where thanks was acceptable. He slid his hand to my back and tugged me closer, then started running his hand through my hair again. On the other side of the closed bedroom door, I could hear the rest of the house starting to wake up—floorboards creaking in the hall, the rattling clatter of Spike running up the stairs, the distant sound of the cats yowling. “We should probably get up.”

“Probably,” Tybalt agreed, though not without reluctance. I started to pull away; he followed after and gave me one last, lingering kiss before finally letting me get out of bed.

By the time I came back from the bathroom, he was half-dressed, looking around the floor in mild confusion. “I know I was wearing a shirt when I got here,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and went to my dresser for clean underwear. “My room's not that messy.”

“I suppose it depends on your point of comparison,” he replied. “Compared to Raj's quarters, it's bordering on immaculate.”

I finished with my bra and turned to face him. “That bad?”

Tybalt looked a bit pained. “Whatever you're imagining, the reality is almost certainly worse.”

“Wow.” I shook my head and bent down to grab yesterday's jeans off the floor. Tybalt's shirt was underneath them. “Ah, here you go.” I picked it up and tossed it to him, biting my lip to keep from smiling at the memory of how our clothes had ended up in a pile together. It still didn't quite seem real. After so many years of... well, being difficult at each other was probably the best way to sum it up, it was hard to believe that everything had changed.

I pulled on my jeans and a clean tank top while Tybalt finished getting dressed. He stood up, stretched, then walked over and kissed me. Okay, so the near-constant kissing was making the change in our relationship a little easier to believe. He gave me a faint, almost wondering half-smile when we parted, like he was still a little stunned by all of this, too.

May as well go for broke, then. I smiled back and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “I love you,” I said, managing not to stumble over the words. I'd told him that last morning, more or less, but that was a somewhat angst-ridden and dramatic confession. This was... This was something normal. Or something that would be normal, eventually.

He blinked at me, then beamed, smiling so wide I was a little afraid he'd strain something. “I love you, too,” he said.

I grinned back. Oh, we were going to be  _insufferable_ for a while, I could already tell. “C'mon,” I said, taking his hand as I moved towards the door. “Let's go find out who won the pool.”

Tybalt was silent for a moment. “They were betting on our relationship?”

“I don't know for sure, but with this group, would you really be surprised?”

He sighed as I opened the door. “Sadly, no.”


	5. Toby/Tybalt and family, breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a normal evening breakfast with her ex-Fetch, her squire, and the Prince of Cats. Set between Ashes of Honor and Chimes at Midnight.

I wandered into the kitchen and made it all the way to the coffee maker before I realized something was off. I paused, trying to wrangle my sleep-addled brain into cooperation. May was at the stove, making pancakes. Jazz was probably still at work. I slowly turned around to look at the kitchen table. Quentin was sitting in his usual chair, drowning his pancakes in maple syrup like the patriotic Canadian he was, while Raj was piling bacon onto his plate.

Oh. That was it. “Does Tybalt know you're here?” I asked, pointing at the young Cait Sidhe.

“Probably.” He gave me an unrepentant grin. “I told him I was hanging out with Quentin last night, and I ended up just crashing on the couch. He won't mind.” The grin turned into something closer to a leer. “Kinda surprised Uncle Tybalt's not here, actually.”

I shrugged and poured myself a mug of coffee, then downed half of it before speaking again. “Despite popular belief,” I said, refilling my mug, “we're not actually joined at the hip.”

“Well--”

“Shut up, May,” I said pleasantly and reached over Quentin's head to grab some bacon.

She just laughed. “Your pancakes are ready, Toby.”

I shoved the piece of bacon in my mouth and walked over to get my plate. “I have the best ex-Fetch,” I said. She'd made my pancakes exactly the way I liked them, with grape jelly and powdered sugar.

“As far as I know, you have the _only_ ex-Fetch,” May said, grabbing her own plate of pancakes.

Quentin eyed my plate and let out a mournful sigh as I sat down. “I don't understand why you do that to your pancakes,” he said.

“Never developed a taste for maple syrup.” I grabbed my fork and started swirling the jelly and sugar into a delicious paste. “Mom hated the stuff.”

Quentin's eyes went wide, and he put a hand to his heart in what I hoped was mock horror. “Why?”

“You know that whole riding the blood thing we can do?” I said. Quentin nodded. “Mom was apparently powerful enough that she could do that with plants. She told me that maple syrup tasted like trees screaming.”

Silence fell over the table as the boys pondered that and May buttered her pancakes. “How can something taste like screaming?” Raj finally asked.

“Hell if I know.”

Quentin frowned at me. “Are Dóchas Sidhe really that much more powerful than Daoine Sidhe?” he asked. “I mean, you'd think at least some pureblooded Daoine would run into that problem.”

“Again, hell if I know.” I shrugged and took a bite of pancake. “Mom's Firstborn, so the normal power rules don't apply. Also, she might have been lying. She did that a lot.” Not that I was deeply, profoundly bitter about that or anything. “But either way, I get really good pancakes.”

“They're all purple,” Quentin said, sounding offended. Raj snickered and swiped another piece of bacon.

“More maple syrup for you.” Before anyone else could comment on my choices in pancake toppings, the phone rang. I tilted my chair back on two legs and grabbed it off the counter. “Daye residence, Toby speaking, if the world's ending I can't do anything about it until I've had at least two more cups of coffee.”

“Good evening to you too, October,” Tybalt said, sounding amused.

I grinned and let my chair fall back onto all four legs. “Hey, you,” I said. Across the table from me, May sighed dreamily and put her hands under her chin, all Disney-princess style. I flipped her off. She beamed at me. “What's up?”

“I merely wanted to make sure that my nephew was in your possession.” Tybalt made a sound like he was trying to stifle a yawn. I grinned again. He was cute when he'd just woken up.

“Yeah, he's here, and he's eating all the bacon.” I paused. “You wanna come over? We've got pancakes, and if you hurry, there might still be bacon.”

“What, not going to offer me coffee?”

I rolled my eyes. “Tybalt, it's me. There's  _always_ coffee.” Quentin snickered and almost choked on his pancakes. I moved the phone away from my mouth. “As your knight, I forbid you to choke to death on your breakfast.” That just made him laugh harder.

“I think I'm better off not asking for clarification,” Tybalt commented dryly.

“Probably,” I said, grabbing my mug. “So, you coming over for breakfast or not?”

“I believe so.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, almost shyly, “I would like to see you tonight.”

I smiled, even as I felt my face go warm. “It's really nice to not have to make excuses about that anymore.”

“You have no idea,” he said. I probably didn't, truth be told. From what he'd told me, he'd been carrying a torch for me for a _long_ time. “I'll be there shortly.”

“Good. I'll see you soon.” I hung up, still smiling, and tossed the phone back on the counter.

“You two are adorable,” May declared.

“Shut up.” 


End file.
